Sufficient Order

Why is there apparent order to creation rather than chaos? This seems to be a corollary to the famous question Ludwig Wittgenstein ask: “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” In the February 8 post, I ended up talking about order but all that was said is that, by looking for order in creation, we can find order, although it is not always easy to do. Finding order in creation is important for two reasons. First, as discussed in that earlier post, the apparent absence of order can be disturbing, but it can also be interesting and can lead to a fascination with the Abyss. Second, finding order is necessary to be able to problem solve and this is the thing that human beings do best. This will be discussed in the next post.

So, we look for order…and we find order. Not an all encompassing order because we human beings are incapable of finding any all encompassing order. We do not have the computing skills to collect, process, store, or use with feedback all the information that we need. We are bounded, rationally. Thus, we are always working with an amount of information that is (often far) less than what we need in order to perceive an all encompassing order. Humans do observe or identify sufficient order to make decisions and solve more and more difficult problems. And, this has allowed them to evolve and progress from a very primitive stage of development to the situation they now find themselves occupying.

We cannot ascertain how early in their history human beings recognized order, whether implicitly or explicitly. The recognition had to have been there, since order allows for practical problem solving and so is beneficial to the survival of the species. The appearance of a lack of order leads to uncertainty and anxiety and requires another kind of problem solving if one is not to be drawn into the Abyss. A response to the problem solving effort of human beings within the context of no apparent order can be religious in nature. (We will discuss this aspect of human development in the February 29 posting.) The fact that order is not obvious in all situations leads to a constant tension between direct problem solving and the kind of problem solving needed to deal with those situations in which order seems to be absent. It is a tension that has never been resolved, even up to this day.

A belief in order is important to us as human beings and it needs to be a part of our communal belief systems in order for cultures to thrive or survive. Unless a society can adequately solve problems and go on to solve more and more difficult problems, it will either decay or be surpassed by other cultures or societies that are better at solving problems. So, I would argue that we need to have in our world view some belief (implicitly or explicitly) that there is order in the world and that we are a part of that order.

The Jewish/Christian tradition contains a belief that creation is ordered; and this belief is presented at the very beginning of its “book”. What do we read in the first chapter of the first book in the Bible? We read an imaginative rendering of the creation of the earth…and it is a very ordered rendering. The world was created, we are told, in a set amount of time and in a specific order. There is nothing haphazard or chaotic in this creation…it is very structured. And, note, this world was created ‘out of the chaos.’ That is, the distinction is made between what was created and the chaos, and it can be concluded from this that creation, the world, is not, at its foundation, chaotic!

Note also that the rendering starts out with the words, “In the beginning, God…” This is important because it shows that to the author(s), the existence of God is an assumption…God’s existence does not need to be proved. God is right there from the very beginning of the story. This narrative then tells us, right up front, that there is a God, that this God created the world we live in, and that the world is ordered. And, we are also told that God looked at this creation and called it “good” which implies that the creation was as God wanted it.

Now, since creation is ordered, human beings can be held accountable for their decisions. That is, they are responsible for what they do. Why is this? Well, if you don’t have order and everything is chaotic then people can have no idea what the results of their actions will be and hence no one can say that they are responsible for what they do. To be held accountable, people must be able to forecast what might result from the actions they take. Only by forecasting the possible outcomes of their actions can they make an informed decision as to what they should do in a specific situation. In this respect, there must be sufficient order in the world for cause-and-effect to work. Only if there is order can there be a cause for every effect.

But, a new issue has been introduced into the argument. I intentionally introduced the phrase ‘possible outcomes.’ We are back to the human condition that was mentioned in the second paragraph above. Human brains have limited computing power. That is, human decision making is bounded because human beings never have all of the information they need to make a decision. In other words, they do not have complete information pertaining to the full cause-and-effect relationships that exist in any specific situation. They must make decisions in the face of uncertainty of outcomes. We don’t know exactly what outcome will occur given a specific action because so many other things that we can’t identify might impact the result of our decision. A forecast of possible outcomes can only be probabilistic.

Does the bible story include any consideration of this aspect of the human condition? Yes, it does. We must move into the story of the Garden of Eden to pick up this aspect of human existence. God indicates that there are certain trees in the Garden from which the human beings are not allowed to eat. One of these trees is called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Some interpreters argue that this tree is really the Tree of the Knowledge of Everything, because if one knows everything there is to know about Good and Evil, then one knows everything. And, why doesn’t God want human beings to know everything? We are told that if human beings know everything then they would be like god! The further implication of this is that God is the only one who knows everything…that is one thing that makes God, God. Thus, human beings are faced with having to live their lives with only incomplete information and this, of course, means that all decision making is made under conditions of uncertainty.

Therefore, we see at the very beginning of the foundational literature of the Jewish/Christian Bible the following beliefs: God exists; there is order in God’s creation; this order means that human beings can be held accountable for their actions; and human beings do not have all the information they need when making a decision so that decisions have to be made in the face of uncertainty. This last belief does not relieve human beings from the responsibility for the decisions that they make. This is because there is sufficient order in creation so that humans are expected to make the ‘best’ decision that they can make most of the time. We will, of course, come back to this point again!

We cannot leave this story line without bringing up one more aspect of human decision making: human beings do make decisions that are not always in their best interest. This raises the question as to whether or not there might exist something either within the individual human or within creation that distracts humans from making the ‘best’ decisions. We are told that Eve (the first woman) was confronted by a serpent. She was persuaded by the serpent to eat a certain apple, a fruit that God had told the humans that they would die if they ate of it. But, the serpent also told Eve that God did not really mean that they would die if they ate of the apple and he was right! God did not mean that they would die physically…only that they would die in a spiritual sense. This opens the door to the possibility that there might exist outside influences that distract individuals so that they make decisions that are not in their best interest. These influences might be called serpents, the devil, Satan, or something else. We will have to hold the discussion of this topic till later.